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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26271172">Stop, oh my friends, let us pause to weep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairywearsbootz/pseuds/fairywearsbootz'>fairywearsbootz</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood and Gore, Canon Temporary Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Getting Together, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Pre-Canon, Temporary Character Death, actually maybe a bit more than canon-typical, more like canon temporary character deaths (plural), seriously so much blood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 05:35:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,175</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26271172</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairywearsbootz/pseuds/fairywearsbootz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Another take on Joe/Nicky getting together, this one with lots of run-on sentences, pre-Islamic poetry, and excessive use of the word blood.</p><p>---</p><p> </p><p>  <em>It doesn't take long until he can feel it again, under his cheek where his head is resting: the beat of this cursed heart, how it springs up again, strong and steady; no matter how hard he tries he can't stop it, and it goes on</em><br/><br/><em>and on</em><br/><br/><em>and on</em><br/><br/><em>and on</em><br/><br/><em>and on</em><br/><br/><em>and his own heart beats along with it.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>108</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Stop, oh my friends, let us pause to weep</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to <a href="https://slashmarks.tumblr.com/">slashmarks</a> for beta reading. They also pointed me to the fact that the desert around Jerusalem would actually be rocky not sandy – so that is entirely my mistake but I call artistic liberty due to my overwhelming need to let Yusuf and Nicolo wander around sandy dunes.</p><p>Updated on 2020-12-15 because I kept fiddling with it and I wanted to do something that is pretentiously formatted.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="first">The first time: The chaos of the battlefield.</p><p> </p><p>Men screaming, men fighting, men killing, men dying; a writhing mass of bodies and steel, pushing and pulling Yusuf through its currents. The sun burns in his eyes, sweat pouring down his face, down his neck, down his back like water. He surges forwards with the other soldiers, past one Frank, another one, a third. The fourth raises his longsword; Yusuf slashes straight at his unprotected belly, through his chainmail, into the softness underneath. In the same instant, the sword comes down, crashes through cloth, crashes through skin, through muscle and tendon and flesh, and oh, he didn't know his body was capable of such pain, as the blade falls and</p><p>       cuts</p><p>             his world</p><p>                           in two:</p><p> </p><p>into the before, when he still knew he would die;</p><p>       and the after, where—</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">He wakes up.</p><p>He wakes up and he remembers this knowledge, indisputable, irrefutable: that he has died, and yet.</p><p>And yet.</p><p>The roar of the battle has already moved on, only a buzzing left in his ears. There is too much blood, but it might not all be his. He reaches up, terrified of the wound he will find but under his fingers, smooth skin—</p><p>Opposite him, a body stirs; unfolds unsteady limbs and at one end, the flash of a long blade. Yusuf barely has time to jerk up his sabre, up up into the centre of this tumbling mass, before the sword plunges through his chest.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">He wakes up.</p><p>Night has fallen. Somewhere, the city screams in agony. The bodies Yusuf is lying on have long since lost all warmth, their blood mixed with his own, sticking against his back.</p><p>His chest doesn't hurt.</p><p>Around him, the only movement is that of crows and vultures; until a shadow gathers in front of him, like storm clouds in the dark. Silently, invisibly, Yusuf's fingers close around the hilt of his sabre; his legs tense as the figure slowly turns and then</p><p> </p><p>he rises again</p><p>              and again</p><p> </p><p>                             again–</p><p> </p><p>                                                        again</p><p> </p><p class="first">(<em>And through it all, a face; he knows that face, why does he–</em></p><p><em>know, he’s seen–</em>)</p><p> </p><p>again.</p><p> </p><p>The horror of realizing that he is fighting only one man; the slow dawning dread of understanding that death comes for neither of them.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">"Have you cursed me to this?" he yells. His voice is hoarse. "Are you a demon sent to test me?"</p><p>„ Silénçio, diâo," the other man spits. He charges.</p><p>Yusuf's sabre slashes forwards, sideways. Blood and guts are spilling out, soft and red and as human as Yusuf is and will ever be again.</p><p>The Frank's eyes are breaking, fluttering closed; Yusuf edges closer, wanting to see despite himself what will happen, how it works…</p><p>A dagger snaps upwards, and Yusuf—</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">They fight and they fight and they die and they fight, under the bright sky, the black sky, the burning sky, the glowing ashes of the shining city stinging in their eyes, the city that writhes and burns and—</p><p>blood, wet blood, red blood, one of their lives pulsing on Yusuf’s tongue; he tries to push himself upwards, red in his eyes red in front of him, he gets a grip somewhere on the Frank's armour red on his hands scrabbling over slick metal, threads of red drawing out between them blood he stabs blood he cuts</p><p>       blood he falls—</p><p> </p><p>he falls</p><p> </p><p class="first">and</p><p> </p><p>rises again; the tide of his own blood, his own life swells upwards, carries him with it to throw him once more against a mouth, wide open, that roars and rages just like his own, that screams for a death that refuses to come for them</p><p> </p><p>and so he rises, on his hands,</p><p>       so he crawls, on his knees,</p><p>              so he claws, over bodies,</p><p>                                   screams, in his ears–</p><p> </p><p class="first">Screams. More screams, closer to them. They break apart, panting, turn, to see figures tumbling down the walls, arms, legs, fire still tearing—</p><p>Yusuf whirls around. The Frank has half-lowered his sword. His eyes, so wide, glistening, ghosts of flames dancing—</p><p>Yusuf screams; throws away his sabre. Next to him is a rock, half-buried under a dead horse. He picks it up, runs, barrels into the Frank, pushes him onto his back. The knight tries to escape but Yusuf kneels on his arms, raises the rock and brings it down, down, down, again and again, blood is flying, brain is flying, bone is cracking under his blows, the Frank's body twitches, his hands—</p><p> </p><p>He lies still.</p><p> </p><p>Yusuf rolls to his feet; lets the stone drop. He can still hear the screams. If there is a hell, maybe this is it: this fire-lit barren plain and this endless fight, and the sounds and the smells as his world is razed to the ground.</p><p>His knees give away; his palms. He pitches forward, onto the Frank's body.</p><p>It doesn't take long until he can feel it again, under his cheek where his head is resting: the beat of this cursed heart, how it springs up again, strong and steady; no matter how hard he tries he can't stop it, and it goes on</p><p> </p><p class="first">and on</p><p> </p><p class="first">and on</p><p> </p><p class="first">and on</p><p> </p><p class="first">and on</p><p> </p><p class="first">and his own heart beats along with it.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">The sun has risen again. They are alone on the battlefield. No one pays attention to them; even the scavengers have left.</p><p>Once more, they face each other. Yusuf forces his aching hands around his sabre; sees the Frank raise his sword slowly, and then—</p><p>The Frank turns and runs, jumping over the obstacles of dead men and dead horses, towards the hills in the distance. Yusuf curses; rips a spear out of a body to his right and throws it as hard as he can.</p><p>He only hits the Frank's left side but it's enough; the man stumbles, collapses. Yusuf runs after him, breath panting. He stops only for a quick glance; starts moving again when the longsword whips forward, tangles with his legs. He crashes down into the dusty ground.</p><p>Hands claw at cloth, bodies pushing, stumbling, forward, away from the battlefield, away from the city. The sun crawls over the sky, sets and rises and crawls and sets and rises and step by step, death by death, they move away from the city,</p><p>over churned up earth,</p><p>over stony roads,</p><p>over dried-up meadows</p><p>where goats are watching them out of dark bright eyes, fleeing from these man-beasts in tattered cut up clothing, covered and coated in sweat and blood and guts.</p><p>Their fights are taking longer and longer. Wounds are healing faster and faster, broken bones stretch out in seconds. More and more, Yusuf sees his movements mirrored in the Frank’s; he moves backward and the Frank follows him; Yusuf moves forward and the Frank leads him; Yusuf moves in circles, pirouettes, weaves low and high, and the Frank is already there; back and forth, all their empty spaces filled by the other’s body and sword.</p><p>Now Yusuf's feet are pushing against the sluggish flow of sand down a dune, are trying to balance on its crescent, are tumbling down the side of another one; are cut open on the salt-caked shores of dried up lakes and all the while his sabre dances and sings in his hand and his wounds are opening and closing as fast as his eyes are blinking against the midday sun.</p><p>He almost doesn't hear it over the roar of his blood in his ears, over the music of their blades clashing: hooves on soft sand, the jingle of armour and harness, the wind catching in cloaks and flags.</p><p>The first arrow takes them both by surprise; they stare at its head where it's sprouting from Yusuf's chest, barbs glistening, dripping. They stare at the arrow and then their eyes fly up; meet, and for a second Yusuf thinks–</p><p> </p><p>darkness.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">When he wakes up, it's night again. There's a small fire blazing a few feet away. Food lies next to him: bread, dried fruit, some sort of meat. A skin of water.</p><p>For a second he can only blink, eyes still heavy with sleep, with death. Then the smell hits him and he wolfs it down, no thought, not one, only instinct as he swallows a date whole, chokes, and still can't stop cramming food into his mouth. From somewhere a heavy hand comes to pound on his back and he can breathe again and eat again and he doesn't stop until every last crumb is gone.</p><p>Panting he falls back onto the sand, closes his eyes, breathes. The hunger he hadn't even noticed before but less. Finally, he turns his head.</p><p>The Frank is crouching next to the fire, engrossed in the flames. His hands, his arms are coated in blood, dried by now; flakes drift into the flames with every soft breeze. Behind him, a few feet into the night, Yusuf can barely make out: figures that might be human but are somehow less; that bend at awkward angles; that miss pieces he thinks should be there.</p><p>Slowly the Frank turns his head and on his face, Yusuf sees the same things he knows are showing on his: fear; confusion; desperation or something like– something he can't think about, not now, not while the cool breeze brings him the Frank’s scent and the flames paint his cheeks with light and their breaths are the only sound in the night. From the tattered ruins of his belt the Frank draws a dagger; closes the short distance between them on hands and knees. His eyes, half hidden by the scraggy mess of his hair, shadowed by the hollow of his bones, search for that something–</p><p>Too gentle, this time; when he slits Yusuf's throat.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">"<em>I couldn't bear to watch them, not this time,</em>" the Frank says when Yusuf opens his eyes again, or at least something like it; not in his own language like before but in one Yusuf knows, from the Florentine merchants he used to trade with back home, before— before.</p><p>"<em>I didn’t know if I was the only one who couldn’t—</em>" The man presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, his whole body drawing inwards. "<em>Holy Mary, mother of God, I killed them, I–</em>" and then his words become too fast for Yusuf to follow, stumbling over each other, rising, falling, crescending into– "<em>How?</em>" He turns towards Yusuf. „<em>So many have died that were innocent. How can we—</em>"</p><p>He stops himself before he finishes his question; <em>the</em> question, the only one they still have, the one that has brought them here, to this place, to this time.</p><p>Yusuf opens his mouth.</p><p>
  <em>How can we live?</em>
</p><p>But what answer could he ask for when he is afraid to know it himself? What could the other one tell him that he doesn't already know, somewhere deep down in the cut up healing mess of his heart? Silence is the only defence either of them have left.</p><p>He closes his mouth again. Relief flashes over the Frank's face, relief settles into his own limbs.</p><p>Yusuf sighs. "<em>What is your name?"</em></p><p>The Frank's hands twitch; he glances at Yusuf from below his rust-stained hair. "<em>Nicolo di—</em>" He cuts himself off, leans back against the sand. "<em>Nicolo</em>." He raises an eyebrow at Yusuf. <em>Yours</em>?</p><p>Yusuf smirks. "<em>Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib.</em>"</p><p>Nicolo snorts with a half-swallowed laugh.</p><p>"<em>You can call me Yusuf,</em>" Yusuf allows. "<em>Where did you find the food?</em>"</p><p>Nicolo's gaze twitches over to the bodies behind them, half-buried in the sand. His jaw tightens.</p><p>“<em>So what now?</em>” Yusuf asks.</p><p>Nicolo shrugs. His fingers play with the hilt of his sword.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">What can you do when you are beyond death? Where to go when you have crossed the last threshold and have kept going? When cities are for the living and graveyards for the dead and you can’t make a home in either of them?</p><p>So the only constant left for them is this: the clanging of steel on steel, the tear of cloth and flesh, the rhythm of their bodies locked in fight after fight after death after fight.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">They take their time now, though; they sleep, they eat when they find food, they rest in the cool sand. Sometimes now, their fights last hours and days.</p><p>They shed their armour at some point, for what do they need it for? Pieces of silvery snake skin, remnants of what they once were; it can’t protect them from what they are doing to each other. They leave it behind, on their slow meandering path deeper into the desert, further towards something that Yusuf might have called destiny once.</p><p>Night again; they are walking on the soft blade of a dune, footsteps behind them quickly wiped out by the wind, the endless ocean of the desert in front of them. The sky opens up above them, a blue so dark it is almost black; the stars are slashed across, a smattering of white like all the blood they have shed of each other, waiting to rain down on them as soon as the sun rises again. But right now, right here, the set of Nicolo's shoulders is relaxed as he walks next to Yusuf; their swords are safely stashed away in their scabbards, and the quiet width of the desert night sings in Yusuf's heart.</p><p>"I wish we had horses," he says, in Arabic, because he only talks for the joy of talking, the joy of hearing his voice amidst the velvet silence, and because Nicolo is watching him with calm blue eyes. "Not one of these cold-blooded dull beasts you people ride but a desert horse! A beautiful one, a fast one, a proud one–" he whistles through his teeth, shakes his head. The corner of Nicolo's mouth twitches.</p><p>"Early in the morning, while the birds were still nesting, I mounted my steed," Yusuf recites, the familiar rhythms rolling softly of his tongue, carried by the wind to the bloodless blood stars. "Well-bred was he, long-bodied, outstripping the wild beasts in speed, swift to attack, to flee, to turn, yet firm as a rock swept down by the torrent…"</p><p>Nicolo listens curiously, all the strength of his body turning towards Yusuf; all his danger, all his deadly and quicksilver strikes flowing down the long line of his back and his arms and his fingers into the sand between them–</p><p>"The eye could scarcely realize his beauty," Yusuf continues; his voice grows rough — because of the cold, it's cold in the desert at night, isn't it? "For, when gazing at one part, the eye was drawn away by the perfection of another part.</p><p> </p><p>"He stood all night with his saddle and bridle on him,</p><p>"He stood all night while I gazed at him admiring and did not rest in his stable.</p><p>"But come, my friends, as we stand here mourning, do you see the lightning?”</p><p> </p><p>He falters. Far away on the horizon, dawn is glowing upwards, the embers of a new day re-kindling, re-awakening, a promise of heat and pain, of sweat and blood. They stop together to watch as a thin sliver of white-hot light creeps upward, flows outwards, the molten sun hissing through the air in front of them.</p><p>Nicolo turns towards him. "<em>Finish it</em>," he says. "<em>Please</em>."</p><p>"See its glittering," Yusuf says softly; pulls the words out of his heart like silk, like honey, like everything he always kept for himself and everything he now wants to give away freely; a last wish before one of them finally ends their endless task. "Like the flash of two moving hands, amid the thick gathering clouds…"</p><p>In the twilight Nicolo's eyes are dark and lovely; he is close enough Yusuf can feel his sleeve brush his own and the day, the day is still only a glitter on the sand far away from them, and yet–</p><p> </p><p>"They were drowned and lost</p><p>       in the depths of the desert at evening."</p><p> </p><p>There is only one way all of this can end.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">And yet: In the back of his head, a thought is growing, one that he probes carefully only to shrink away, to lean in again, unable not to circle it on light-treading feet…</p><p>Nicolo is sleeping a few feet away. Yusuf can barely glimpse the slow rise of his chest, the one that he himself has stopped so many times, and in the silence of their shared breaths he dares to imagine that maybe, <em>maybe</em>, the fact that their wounds are closing, that they can't keep each other dead no matter how hard they fight, that they rise again and again into each other's waiting arms; that maybe it doesn't mean that their destiny is to be each other's death</p><p>but—              </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>###</p><p> </p><p> </p><p class="first">And then, they climb another towering dune and on the other side: an oasis, nestled into the hollow of the sands like a blue-green jewel. They race down the hillside, tumbling, splash into the water like children, shed the tatters of their clothing; let the cool floods close together over their heads.</p><p>Yusuf comes up first, shaking water out of his hair. He runs his hands over his face, dirt and sand and blood flowing down his chest in rivulets. A couple of feet away, Nicolo surfaces in whirls and surges of white foam, drops of liquid light.</p><p>Despite all his time in the desert, most of Nicolo’s skin is still as pale as the moon; his hair and beard are dripping with water. He smiles and says something, but Yusuf can’t hear; can’t see anything but the smooth plains of his back, his shoulders, his sides. All the places his sabre has touched, where blood has leaked out of this body that is now moving seamlessly through the water, where flesh has gaped open and bones have shown through and he needs; he needs to—</p><p>Nicolo has stilled; slides closer through the water and suddenly Yusuf’s hands stretch out; are on Nicolo's skin; his fingers tracing every invisible mark he has left, every cut and every barely there pinkish-white line. To assure himself: that this is real. That this body – pale, and foreign, and like an unwanted, unexpected gift – is whole and alive, despite God and nature and the order of things, despite everything he knew and believed, despite everything he himself has done; has tried to do.</p><p>And Nicolo— Nicolo stays unmoving under the paths Yusuf draws over his body; only a shiver now and then and his breath, slowly in, slowly out, in, out, and—</p><p>He grabs Yusuf’s hands; pulls him closer. Water sloshes between them. Somewhere, a hawk cries out. Under his palm, Yusuf can feel it again: the beating of this heart, cursed like his own.</p><p>“<em>I am glad,</em>” Nicolo says, quietly into the space between them, “<em>I am glad that I couldn’t—</em>”</p><p> </p><p>The sun has set when they finally leave the little lake, pruney like dates, all grime and blood and guts and death left behind them in the deep clear water; only hope has come back out with them.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Yusuf is reciting parts of <a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/hanged/hanged1.htm">the poem of Imru' al-Qais</a>, one of the Muʻallaqāt or hanging poems from the 6th cent. CE (Here you can find <a href="https://archive.org/details/alsabalmuallaqat00johnrich/page/n27/mode/2up">an older Arabic-English edition</a>), and the title also comes from there. I strongly recommend reading the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imru%27_al-Qais">wikipedia-article on him</a>, that dude had one wild life! For dramatic purposes I picked out lines I thought fitting and left out a lot – I hope his ghost can forgive me, it was for a good cause.</p><p>As <a href="https://sixth-light.tumblr.com/post/624462754548514816/the-crusades-a-fandom-primer">this helpful tumblr post points out</a>, Nicky and Joe would have shared "the ‘lingua franca’ (Frankish language, literally) of the Mediterranean trading region, a pidgin based heavily on maritime Italian languages". A sentence further on it says, "Yusuf 300% would have thought of him as a ‘Frank’ (the generic term for Western Christians) and probably annoyed him by calling him that until at least 1200 or so", so that's where that comes from.</p><p><a href="https://digilander.libero.it/paolore2/cult_tradiz/proverbi.html">https://digilander.libero.it/paolore2/cult_tradiz/proverbi.html</a> tells me that diâo means devil in Genovese Ligurian dialect, so surely definitely it was the same in the First Crusade!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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